4 Wheels 4 Girls

This last summer, my uncle Mike took me, Ana, Stella, and Greta tubing on the Mississippi River, right in front of Lansing, IA. It was really exciting.

Me, Ana, and Stella tubing on the Mississippi River

The day was warm and the water was freezing. Stella fell off the tube. It was super fun to watch Stella fall off the tube. But I felt bad for Stella because I always think catfish are going to bite off my toes.

Me and Ana tubing

You can tell from me and Ana’s faces that we are having a blast tubing on the Mississippi.

On the Family Farm

Every summer we go visit Uncle Gary and Aunt Kim’s family farm. Last summer we went to help them in the garden. We helped dig up radishes. I like to help them; it makes me feel like a farmgirl.

We’ll probably be up in Lansing for a couple of weeks, so we will be posting some photos and other things from past vacations and adventures.

So, speaking of us being up in Iowa, we had lots of fun sledding this past winter, December 2010. This is a video of Ana sledding in her cute little blue sled.

We thought it was pretty dang funny when it happened.
There may be more sledding videos coming, so keep your eye out! 🙂

On Saturday, we left Ocean Springs, Mississippi to go to Lansing, Iowa. We got a phone call from Jean’s parents saying that Grandpa (Jean’s dad) wasn’t doing very well, so we decided to come visit. On Saturday morning, we went to a place in Jackson, MS, where we could winterize our RV, (it’s too cold; our pipes would freeze up. Unfortunately, we had just de-winterized two days earlier) and then we continued our journey.

Entertaining ourselves along the drive

A monkey face

We drove all day Saturday and slept in Troy, Missouri, in another Walmart parking lot.

Sunset along the road in Arkansas

We stopped at two Subways to eat, then, around 2:00, we finally arrived.

Bluffs along the Mississippi River

Lots of family members are here, and it’s a really nice place to be. My sisters and I might start attending school here.

On Friday we received news it was time to come home to Iowa to be with Jean’s dad, Bill. So Saturday morning we pointed the ship north and made a beeline up the Mississippi river.

A detour to Iowa

We went on a bike ride in the bayou and we were going to the post office in Ocean Springs. We did not find the post office.

Me on top of the Biloxi Bay Bridge

Then we rode further to the Biloxi Bay Bridge. It was very tall and scary. I thought I was going to fall off the bridge but there was a ramp so no one could fall off the bridge. I made it up the hill without stopping. We stopped at the top of the bridge. I saw the water. And then we went down. We did not go all the way across the bridge to Biloxi because we did not want to go back up the hill for no reason. Because it was so tiring. My legs hurt once I went up the hill.

It was fun to ride down the hill.

Thursday we drove to Ocean Springs, Mississippi. We stayed at a campground in the Davis Bayou. The campground was nice but it was cold at night because it was 28 degrees at night and we left a ceiling vent open by mistake.

On Friday we went on a huge bike ride to Biloxi, MS. My dad made two wrong turns on our way there. On the way, we went by the ocean and stopped at the beach.

My Family on the Beach in Mississippi

From the beach we rode into town. On my left I saw the ocean. On my right I saw huge houses with huge lawns. I heard birds chirping. I thought they sounded really pretty. In the town, we saw a candy shop that my dad made us stand right in front of it waiting for our family to catch up. We got sort of annoyed with our dad because he tempted us so much to go in and eat all that candy. It was the worst moment of my life.

We went to the post office and realized that it wasn’t there, so we decided to go over the Biloxi Bay Bridge.

The Biloxi Bay Bridge

We were following my dad up the bridge, but somehow Greta got past him and I followed her all the way down the bridge. In the middle of the bridge, I saw my dad coming down. I stopped for about a minute then kept on biking. At the bottom of the bridge me and Greta waited for about 15 minutes until my dad came and told us that everyone was waiting for us at the top of the bridge. We followed him all the way back up the bridge. It was really tiring and my legs hurt. Near the middle of the bridge, me and my dad saw a real life pelican. It was floating in the water almost under the bridge when I spotted it. It was my first time seeing a pelican.

At the top of the bridge

When we finally caught up to my mom and sisters, my mom took me, Greta, Stella, and Ana down to the beach while my dad went to the candy shop and got Stella and Ana a praline. Me and Greta did not get as much as Stella and Ana because they didn’t go all the way to Biloxi like we did (because we were not supposed to go ahead without checking with our parents). Me and Greta ended up getting a small piece of praline thanks to my parents. It tasted like heaven.

Tuesday night we arrived at a campground in Destin, Florida. We stayed for two nights. The campground was really nice: the bathrooms were nice and clean and the water was heated.

We played freeze tag with lots of different rules. Like, blind (with our eyes closed), and “cake” which was only on the concrete, and “ice cream” which was only on the grass, and “puppet” which was when we pretended we were wooden and our limbs couldn’t move. There was also one where we could only run in one circle. We could change directions but couldn’t go out of the circle.

It was scary one time when we were playing freeze tag peacefully and suddenly there was the sound of a cat being tortured. It was a really loud meow that was a cat either scared horribly or it was chasing a mouse or someone shot it. But we saw it run off and go off under the porch of a house, so it was okay.

The bathroom light had a timer. After an hour it would shut off. When it shut off, you could turn it back on but it would shut off after an hour again. So one time I went in to take a shower and the light was on. I didn’t think about it shutting off. In the middle of my shower it flicked off and it was really, really dark for the rest of my shower.

I slept really well both nights at the campground.

Biking along the Gulf of Mexico

I outgrew my old bike, so, before we left Atlanta, I got a bigger bike. It has gears. This is my first bike with gears.

On Wednesday, we went on a ten mile bike ride along the Gulf of Mexico. It was on a very flat bike trail, which was nice because I got to test out my gears. We went five miles one way to run some errands, and on the way back we ate dinner at a restaurant. The first five miles were easy because the wind was blowing us forward. The way back was harder though. The wind was blowing us backward. It was not very hard for me though because I used my gears. It would have been way harder on my old bike and I felt really bad for Ellie because she was riding my old bike.

We ate dinner at a restaurant called Pompano Joe’s. I had fried shrimp with french fries, and it was delicious. Except for the back vein wasn’t taken out of the shrimp and it kind of grossed me out but it tasted great anyway.

We ate dinner here

After dinner it was really dark and raining a little and we had to ride two miles or so back to the campground. On the way we passed by palm trees lining the road. They had lights twisted up to the leaves, so they looked like pretty glowing candy canes.

We passed by about six sprinklers rotating in a yard. Me, Ellie, Ana, Greta, and Jean got lucky. Every single sprinkler was pointed away from us when we rode through. But my Dad was trailing behind at the wrong time. The sprinklers got him good.

Thursday morning, we left the campground to go to our next stop: the bayou.

Monday night, we slept at a campsite in Eufaula, Alabama. The campground was very easy to tell where our camper was. Greta was the one that knew the way around the campground that we slept in and never got lost. Some dogs were chasing us when we rode our bikes by them. That was scary. A wiener dog got loose and started following me. I crashed into Stella and fell down and the dog caught up. It came over to me and then it ran off, over by our camper.

One time Stella went into the bathroom and there was a wasp. It was on the floor. So she went into another stall. The next day she met up with the wasp again.

The next day we rode our bikes into town.

Big White House

Then we stopped at a big white house that looks like the white house that the president lives in.

Yummy BBQ Place

We rode to a BBQ place for lunch. The BBQ was so good I felt like I could get 100 of those BBQ sandwiches.

Then we biked down the hill back to the campground. I was scared of the big trucks. I ran into a pole on a bridge. I also crashed into Stella at the bottom of the hill. Mama taught me how to go across the train tracks without turning your handlebars, because if you turn your handlebars you might get stuck and a train might come and run you over. And then we arrived at the campsite, and then we got in the camper and drove away. We are going to Florida.

We hiked into Providence Canyon, on the border of Georgia and Alabama. Down at the bottom of the canyon, there were old creekbeds, which, unfortunately, were mostly mud.

Dad standing in the creekbed

It was SO cool at the very bottom, because you could look up into the little nooks in the rocks and see tree roots and slabs of purple rock and purple sand.

Ellie exploring down in the mud

Ellie discovered some bear tracks and deer tracks in the mud.(Mud is really an amazing thing, don’t you think?) We continued to hike down deeper until we were out of the creekbeds. We decided this would be a nice place to made sandwiches and have a picnic, only to discover that the turkey was frozen and we had forgotten the cheese! So we just ate bread and enjoyed the view for a while.
When we reached the top of the canyon, we scraped off our exhaused, muddy feet and got into the RV. We ate a good lunch of sandwiches (with unfrozen turkey!) and drove off to our next destination-Eufaula, Alabama!!!